I'm absolutely all for new plays about the sisterhood, about the travails of women in different places and eras. Sarah Sigal's new piece for all-female company (except they have a male director here) Fluff Productions, with its focus on women in three very different times, initially suggested pleasing resonances with Michael Cunningham's similarly themed book-turned-film The Hours. Yet the script, which is desperately in need of several more drafts, goes on for world too much and time, and the more words it uses the less it has to say.
Quite what links a household of beleaguered Royalist women in Somerset in 1646 during the Civil War with an upper-class fashion journalist in 1936 and a beleaguered corporate high-flyer in 2014 London remains frustratingly unclear. All too soon, we start to wonder how many more sections of each we will have to endure. We don’t need Sigal to tell us that women have never had it easy and anyway plummy Pamela (Rebecca Dunn), bizarrely stranded in a monologue while everyone else has lumpen conversations, has a fine old time writing articles about Wallis Simpson and doing some part-time spying on the side.
There’s one startling moment when it looks as though Justin Audibert’s production might take wing. Jess Murphy stands alone to shrug off Celia’s modern-day work suit to reveal a simple 17th century bodice, before putting on Lady Anne’s frock. A sophisticated comment on shifting roles down the centuries flickers briefly, and then dies.
Until April 13 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)
